October 3, 1997

Information Technology

Loyola has a new Internet service provider. Since the internet first became available at Loyola we have connected the campus to the rest of the world through LANet. Starting with a connection that could support transmitting 56,000 bits of information per second, network traffic soon grew to outstrip the speed provided us. Two years ago we upgraded the connection to support transmission of up to 1,440,000 bits of information per second.

With the new campus network, we are already seeing an increase in the demand for connections to cyberspace. In partnership with Bailey Link, Inc., and BellSouth Communications, IT has recently implemented a new connection to the Internet which is even faster and more reliable. Currently, Loyola's link to the outside world will support transmission of over 45,000,000 bits of information per second. Think about it; it takes about one-tenth of a second to blink your eye. In that time Loyola will have exchanged four and a half million bits of information with other users on the Internet!

Three separate links have been established. One, between the Broadway campus and the main campus; a second, between the main campus and our Internet service provider; and a third, between the Broadway campus and the Internet. With a redundant system like this in place, even if lightning strikes and knocks out one of our high-speed fiber optic links, users on both campuses will still be able to communicate with each other and with the rest of the world at an amazing speed over the remaining two links.

—William Cahill, Assistant Provost of Information Technology